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What does it really mean to “understand” how students with learning differences see the world? A new website, appropriately titled www.understood.org, offers an answer.

Understood.org provides parents with empowering information using a variety of helpful resources developed by a network of 15 nonprofit groups who specialize in children’s learning and attention issues, including experts such as psychiatrists, neurologists, special education teachers, and speech-language pathologists. It is a broad, versatile resource that can be used as a one-stop-shop for parents looking for information that is tailored to their child.

When parents first enter the site, they can create a profile to receive personalized recommendations for resources based upon their needs. They can read articles to gain greater insight into their child’s challenges or obtain advice about how to best help their child succeed. They can complete questionnaires designed to guide them through important points of consideration when making a decision, such as whether their child’s classroom placement should be changed. They can connect with experts and other parents who are having similar experiences through secure online web discussions and blogs. One of our favorite sections of the site is titled “Through Your Child’s Eyes” that has a student talking about his or her challenges in a particular area, such as attention, a simulation that allows the user to get a better sense of what it would feel like to have the same challenges, and a follow-up with an expert explaining the particular hindrances and strategies to help mitigate them. This offers parents a unique opportunity to experience what day-to-day life might feel like for their child.

Understood.org offers a multitude of insightful resources that are definitely worth taking a few minutes to browse for anyone looking to learn more about learning and attention issues and connect with others who have expert knowledge and similar experiences. Feel free to take a look and let us know what you think!

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD): The State of Learning Disabilities

The New York Times: Helping Parents Deal with Learning and Attention Issues

Imagine you are sitting in a grade school classroom. The teacher walks by to observe your work, looks at your neighbor’s paper, and comments, “Great work. You’re so smart!” She then continues on her way down the row. While this may seem like an innocuous comment, it has a major effect on students’ mindsets in the classroom. Why? It communicates the idea that intelligence is fixed. It makes students think that intelligence is something that either you have or you don’t, and if you are not one of the lucky ones who is smart, then you must be dumb. Instead of communicating this message to children, parents and teachers should promote what is known as a “growth mindset.”

The “growth mindset” is detailed in Carol Dweck’s book titled Mindset: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential. The basic premise is that intelligence can grow over time, thus all learners can improve. To foster this idea, parents and teachers can say to a child, “You worked really hard to complete this assignment. Great job!” Notice the difference? It is placing the emphasis on the student’s effort. It is important for students to be able to persist through difficult tasks and realize that hard work reaps rewards. If students are praised for their hard work, they are more likely to take risks and believe in their own self-efficacy.

Now imagine that you are in that grade school classroom once again. If the teacher walks by your desk and says to your neighbor, “I can see how hard you’ve been working, well done,” you might think, “Maybe I can work a little harder.” Believing that output correlates with effort will bring a student much further in life than believing that intelligence is unchanging, and it will set them up for much greater success.

Education Week: Creating the Context for Growth Mindsets in the Classroom

New York Magazine: How Not to Talk to Your Kids

The Common Core standards present a significant shift in the way that students are learning and teachers are teaching. They emphasize a deep understanding of content by thinking critically, analyzing information, and solving problems in creative ways. The aim is to equip every student with the necessary tools to be college and career ready by high school graduation.

One of the biggest academic components that the standards require is writing. Students are expected to write across the curriculum to defend a position, explain findings, propose solutions, analyze events, and evaluate possibilities. For students who have difficulties with their executive functions, this can be particularly challenging.

Consider, for example, a student I had in the classroom whom I will call Joe. When it was time to write for any purpose throughout the day, Joe would often sit at his desk with a blank stare. When other students would have a paragraph of written work complete, Joe would have a couple of words. It was clear that Joe had ideas, but was stuck when it came to getting those ideas on paper. Joe worked with me after school where I was able to give him an explicit structure and one-on-one attention for his writing step-by-step. At the end of the day, he was able to complete writing assignments just as well as, if not better than, the other students.

With a little extra persistence, Joe and all students like him can conquer the Common Core!

By Emily A., Mary Washington College Class of 2015

Yes, summer is nearly over and the inevitable is upon us — alarm clocks, packed lunches, and a growing to-do list will become our reality for the next nine months. Brace yourselves!

But during the whirlwind of filling out forms, tackling a monstrous school supply list, and enforcing last minute summer reading, it is important to remember that simplicity is key in the race to become organized.

As a current college student, I have found truth behind a saying recycled by my teachers, babysitters, and parents: less is more.

I recently came across Jessica Lahey’s article in The New York Times, Simple Solutions for Back-to-School Organization (Sorry No Trapper Keeper!), which includes some very helpful hints for students learning to become organized and parents teaching organizational skills.

Here are a few of Lahey’s tips that I find to be most effective:

• The answer to disorganization is hardly ever to acquire more stuff: A binder is a student’s best friend. Keep them clean, label sections, and have multiple. Mountains of paper are difficult for anyone to keep organized let alone lug around.
• Use a planbook or an agenda: If you write it down, it’s more likely you are going to remember it and complete it. This habit has lifelong benefits!
• Keep necessary school supplies handy: A sharpened pencil is what gets the homework done. Try installing “old-school” pencil sharpeners, or have a fresh supply of pens.
• Organization is a trial-and-error process: Everyone is different, explore your options and see what works best, whether it’s color-coding, or daily or weekly maintenance.

So before panicking at the thought of the rapidly approaching school year, just remember to keep it simple.

It’s hard to believe that July is over—where did the summer go?? After six weeks of fun activities and lively discussions, our summer book clubbers packed up their bookmarks and headed out for their August vacations. When school starts in the fall, they’ll have a toolbox of new strategies for determining character traits, visualizing settings, and identifying the problem and possible solutions in their stories. The next time they’re asked to summarize a story, they can take out the colorful comic strip they created in book club this summer as a reminder for how to visualize the main events.

Book clubs are great ways to develop reading skills, but there are also plenty of ways to practice reading comprehension and fluency with your child:

Buddy Reading:  Take turns reading with your child, alternating each page.  This will help your child to hear a fluent reader and to practice his or her fluency as well.  Additionally, this type of reading provides you with an opportunity to discuss the book by asking questions such as: What was the most important event in this chapter or section? Why do you think the character said or did that?  What do you think will happen next?  What would you do if you were in this situation?

Reader’s Theater:  Create a play using an interesting scene in the book.  Each reader can read the dialogue of a different character, practicing reading with expression and fluency.  It’s even more fun when each person has to read the parts of multiple characters, creating different voices and speaking styles!  This allows students to read the same text multiple times (in order to practice their parts) and practice reading aloud and with meaningful expression. This type of reading will also help to deepen comprehension, as the reader thinks about the feeling and actions of the character to use the appropriate expression while reading.

Listen to Reading:  Have your child listen to an audio version of a book while following along with a print version.  Listening to a book can be a nice change for children who struggle with reading.  This allows them to hear expressive and fluent reading while also exposes them to new and interesting vocabulary.  Following along with a text is key to ensure engagement and comprehension.  Readers can underline interesting vocabulary or important events while listening.

When your child is reading on his own, it is important that he chooses a book that is “just right.” Reading a book that is too hard can be frustrating for children and can perpetuate the feeling of “reading is too hard.”  To determine if a book is “just right” have your child pick a book that seems interesting to him.

Then, ask the following questions:

1. Ask your child to read the second page in the book aloud.
2. Have him hold up 5 fingers and each time he comes to a word that he must sound out or that he does not know, he should put a finger down.
3. At the end of the page, if all 5 fingers are down, then the book is too difficult for this reader.
4. If 3 or 4 fingers are down, then ask your child to read the next page or two.
5. Then, check for comprehension by asking him to summarize what he read.

Whether alone, out loud or listening to a digital version, the most important thing to remember is that children improve their reading skills by spending time reading appropriate books.  This is the number one factor in improving fluency, expression and comprehension!

HAPPY READING!

This year, Thinking Organized’s graduates received acceptance letters from amazing schools across the country, including:

• American University
• Bethany College
• Boston University
• Case Western Reserve University
• College of Charleston
• Colorado College
• Columbia College Chicago
• Dickinson College
• Drexel University
• Eckert College
• Elon University
• Emerson College
• George Washington University School of Business
• Georgia Tech College of Engineering
• Hofstra University
• Kenyon College
• Lafayette College
• Lawrence University
• Loyola University New Orleans
• Lynn University
• Macalester College
• Marist College
• Northwestern University School of Engineering
• Ohio Wesleyan University
• Pitzer College
• Roanoke College
• Rochester University
• Savannah College of Art
• Sweet Briar College
• Syracuse University
• The University of Vermont
• Tulane University
• University of Maryland
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• University of Tampa
• Washington College
• William and Mary College

To our graduates: 

We are so proud of you!!! You worked hard, and accomplished a lot. So now, walk across that stage with your head held high! As you prepare for your next adventure, we know that you will take the organizational strategies and skills you learned here at Thinking Organized with you. Your future is bright and we cannot wait to see what is in store for you!

Would you call yourself a procrastinator?  I don’t know too many people who can force themselves to start a task that is really unpleasant, boring or just plain annoying. So many of our students tell us that they procrastinate whenever they face a challenging assignment. And it is not just the kids who procrastinate!  What about the parents?  I have closets that need cleaning and journal articles to read, yet these tasks never seem to get checked off of my “to do” list.

A headline on the morning news last week announced the findings of a new study that links procrastination to heredity. Great, another thing that children can blame on their parents!  However, before I accept the blame for my children’s struggles with procrastination, I believe that we also have to think about the role that the environment plays. According to the study, genes only accounted for half the cases of procrastination; for the other half, the environment was still a culprit.  So, it turns out that this latest round of research confirms much of what we already know.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to conquering procrastination; it takes hard work and diligence.  We know that parents can struggle with procrastination just like their children, and that we need to help our students set up environments that foster productivity.  BUT, we also are painfully aware that this is hard to do!!!

Here is one suggestion that we find helpful.  If your child finds multiple distractions at home and cannot seem to get started on work until late at night, try having him go to a library right after school.  Also, some students have reported that they can really focus at a Starbucks where they can sit with their computer and use the noise to mask any distraction.  The idea is to avoid the procrastination triggers at home by setting a specific amount of time to be in another environment. And don’t forget to reward your concentrated effort by going home and PROCRASTINATING (only for a predetermined amount of time)!!

By Gillian Knoll, Director of Educational Mentoring

Last week the College Board unveiled their plans for a redesigned SAT, with some important changes that are scheduled to go into effect in 2016. We’ve been reading up on the new test in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and our overall impression is a positive one.

Of course, we wish none of our students had to deal with the SAT. It creates a tremendous amount of anxiety for students and it distracts them from what they should be focusing on: working hard in school and developing skills to last a lifetime. But until all colleges adopt a test-optional policy, we’re stuck with standardized tests.

We were pleased to see that some of the most tedious and pointless elements of the SAT are being omitted or replaced with fairer, more practical ones. Here are a few highlights:

• No more mandatory writing section—the essay is now optional! Instead of giving students only 25 minutes to respond to a broad and vague philosophical question, the new essay gives students 50 minutes to analyze how an author makes a specific argument.

• No more “SAT words” that have little to no real-world application! The new test focuses on words that students might actually encounter in college—or at least on planet Earth! And instead of obscure sentence completions, students will be asked to identify words in the context of how they’re used.

• No more penalties for wrong answers! Students no longer have to waste time worrying about whether it’s worth it to gamble on an answer they’re unsure of. Now they can focus on giving their best effort and responding to every question.

The College Board claims that the overall goal of the redesigned test is to align the SAT more closely with what’s being taught in schools. If the new test really lives up to this promise, it will be a definite improvement on the previous version. We work with students every day on understanding words in context, supporting opinions and ideas with evidence, and developing problem-solving strategies, all of which are skills that the new SAT is designed to target.

Of course, there are plenty of skeptics who have questioned the College Board’s motives, and we were interested in their concerns. Perhaps the most common criticism is that the College Board is trying to make their test more like the ACT, which has edged out the SAT in popularity in the last couple of years. There was an interesting piece in last week’s Washington Post blog identifying this competition as the primary reason for the revamped test. I especially liked their comparison between the ACT/SAT testing industry and the competition between the makers of Coke and Pepsi.

So: Do we really think the new SAT is a fair test that predicts students’ success in college, careers, and beyond? Certainly not. After teaching English courses at the college level for a decade and working with Thinking Organized students of all ages year after year, I can tell you that academic achievement has no correlation with being a good test taker. But if our students are forced to take a standardized test on their road to college, the new SAT is a step in the right direction.

Last week, in the middle of all that snow, I saw a student who was in eighth grade. His mom brought him even though they live an hour away.  She said that she did not want to miss the appointment because she and her husband have tried many different strategies and nothing has helped their son.  This boy is very talented with his hands and is mechanically gifted.  Academics, on the other hand, are his Achilles heel.

As I spoke with this young man, I saw a student who talked about the challenges of school, but what he was really saying was that he had no idea how to help himself succeed.  So, instead of working on all of the issues that were difficult, he opted to speed through work, make many errors or just not do the work at all.  I believe that he was not motivated to improve because he felt defeated.

We have seen many students who struggle in school, but this young man struck me because he would have a much easier time learning academics if he could do so under the hood of a car or riding a tractor on a farm.  Now, I know that there are many schools that do focus on a kinesthetic approach to learning, but that is not the norm.  So, how can we help?

What I plan to do is work with this student on how he can build models for himself in order to use his very strong kinesthetic modality to attempt less exciting academic material.  We will have to be very creative to engage this youngster, but if we can motivate, encourage and help this student, then we will be on the way to give him strategies that he can embrace and expand on his own.

This week, I met with two young men who recently graduated from college. I have worked with these wonderful young men throughout their high school careers and kept in touch with them through college. Both of them went to great schools, one majoring in physics and the other majoring in psychology.

Like most recent grads, they are now struggling with securing a job.  They are both very bright and would be valuable assets to any company, so why, you might ask, are they having trouble. Both young men are great at thinking and understanding the global picture but details, time management and the organization of small, incremental steps are the problems.

To find a job, one must be systematic, sequential, punctual and persistent. This is hard for anyone with organization challenges.  Here are some of the suggestions we worked on together that may help you:

1. Create a list of the areas in which you might want to work.
2. Keep a positive attitude; it is not easy to undertake the job searching process.
3. Go to your college career center and see what they have to offer.  Many career centers are very helpful with ideas for jobs, how to interview and how to fill out applications.
4. Try online sites for jobs that are in your field.
5. You can try Monster.com or Career Builders, but they do not have everything that you might be looking for.
6. Some have been successful on Craig’s List, but be careful, make sure the job is real and that you know the specifications of that job before you accept an interview.
7. NETWORK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  Ask parents, teachers and friends if they know anyone in your field of interest and set up as many informational meetings as you can.
8. APPLY, APPLY, APPLY.  You cannot get a job by applying to a handful of places; you need hundreds!!
9. AND REMEMBER, IF YOU DON’T APPLY, YOU CANNOT GET AN INTERVIEW!!

Happy Hunting and keep us posted as to when you find a new position!